


Connect the Dots

by DarcyDelaney



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Caretaker Sam, Dean's terrible eating habits, Gen, Little bit of brotherly schmoop, Minor Surgery, Sick Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-11
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-11 22:29:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3335105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarcyDelaney/pseuds/DarcyDelaney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean has a gallstone attack thanks to his less-than-excellent diet of pie, bacon cheeseburgers, and more pie. Until he can get his gallbladder removed, he's got to eat healthy, Sam-approved foods to avoid having another attack. It doesn't exactly go according to plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Connect the Dots

Sam is woken up by Dean’s gasping, panicked attempts at breathing.

  
“Dean?” he asks, his voice still laced with sleep. He props himself up on his elbow and peeks over at his brother before turning on the bedside lamp.

Dean’s on his side with his eyes squeezed shut, clutching a pillow in an iron grip. He’s taking small, shallow breaths, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Dean!” Sam scrambles out of his bed and grabs his brother by the shoulders and lays him on his back in an effort to quell his brother’s pain. “Hey, can you hear me? Are you awake?”

“Hurts to…breathe…Sammy,” Dean mumbles through clenched teeth. He lets out a hiss of pain that’s seemingly caused by nothing, and his eyes shoot open. “Ah, _fuck_!”

Sam sits on the edge of Dean’s bed and runs a hand through his own sleep-mussed hair. “How long has this been going on?”

“Wokeuplikethis,” Dean mutters, hugging the pillow even harder and turning onto his left side again. “Goddamn it…”

“Shit.” Sam quickly runs through their short list of options. He knows the one he thinks is best will be the last one Dean wants, but he can’t think of anything else; he’s not letting his brother…suffocate to death or something on a cheap-ass flower print quilt. “Dean, I think we should go to the hospital.”

Dean grits his teeth. “Fuck that.”

“Is it getting any better?”

Dean glares at Sam, then buries his face in the pillow. “Fuck.”

Sam takes that as a no. Wide awake now, he pulls on his jeans and a fresh T-shirt before grabbing a hoodie for Dean to wear over his own shirt. “We’re going,” he says firmly, leading Dean out of bed by the elbow. “I’ll even let you keep the pillow.”

“Fuckin’ hate you,” Dean breathes, wincing as he slowly gets to his feet.

“Yeah, yeah. C’mon, dude, before you collapse.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

By the time they get to the hospital, the pain has subsided enough that Dean’s able to walk standing straight and without swearing every three steps, which Sam decides to count as progress. As he leads his bleary-eyed brother into the hospital, he’s relieved to see that the emergency room is practically abandoned. Leave it to Dean to pick a convenient time to get hit with breathing issues, even if that convenient time is four-thirty in the morning.

Dean tries to make for a chair, but Sam leads him up to the front counter, where he recounts his symptoms to the nurse on duty. Severe chest pains, like something’s sitting on his rib cage. It hurts to breathe, so much so that it woke him up. No, he’s never had anything like this happen before. No, he hasn’t traveled out of the country recently. It’s not as bad now, but it still hurts—especially if he puts pressure anywhere around his torso—and he feels nauseous.

They’re able to take him back into a room right away, and a nurse hooks him up to an IV. Dean glares at Sam as the nurse slides the needle into the crook of his arm, and Sam smirks. They’ve caught her at the tail end of her shift; she has to stifle a yawn more than once, and asks Dean the same questions three times over the course of her five-minute stay in the room. She draws some of his blood to deposit into four different vials for tests, then leaves, promising that another nurse will be in shortly.

The new nurse is spiked up on too much coffee, and Sam grins when he sees Dean visibly flinch back from her bounding energy.

“What hurts, sweetheart?” she asks, applying pressure to different parts of his stomach.

“Uh, everyt _mmph_.” Dean’s cut off as she jams a thermometer under his tongue. He folds his arms across his chest and shoots Sam another death glare as the nurse takes his blood pressure.

“Could be a stomach virus,” she muses, pulling the thermometer out of his mouth. “We’ll set you up for an ultrasound to see just what’s going on in there, all right, hon?”

Dean gives her a forced smile, and she pats him on the arm before leaving the room.

“You dragged me to the ER for a stomach virus?” Dean asks.

Sam raises his hands. “Hey, she said it could be a stomach virus. Which means it could be something worse.”

“You’re something worse,” Dean grumbles, glancing at the IV in his arm. “Whatever happened to no hospitals, huh?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, did you _want_  to stay in excruciating pain all day?”

Dean opens his mouth to retort, but before he can, Coffee Nurse comes traipsing back into the room, kicks away the brakes on the wheels of his bed, and pushes him and his IV away toward another area of the hospital for his ultrasound.

 

Twenty minutes later, he’s being wheeled back in, and Sam startles a little. He had been slumped against the wall, trying to catch up on a few minutes of sleep, and straightens quickly, studying his brother, who doesn’t seem to look any different than when he left. A little more annoyed, maybe, but Sam’s used to that.

“Is everything okay?”

Dean glances at him, but doesn’t answer as the nurse sets him back up and gives him a warm blanket and a pillow.

“Just waiting on the results now, dear,” Coffee Nurse says, making sure Dean’s situated before leaving the room again. They sit in silence for a few seconds until the commotion of injured people from what the intercom deemed a five-car accident start flooding the ER. Nurses are scrambling from one room to the other, gathering supplies and searching for IVs and blood pressure monitors.

“Shouldn’t be here,” Dean grumbles. “It’s just stupid chest pain. Nothing.”

Sam rolls his eyes, sick of Dean resenting his efforts to try and make him feel better. “Come on, Dean, it must be something. They would’ve kicked you out if it wasn’t.”

Dean sighs, then rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Goddamn it, Sam. They could be helping people who actually need it right now instead of wasting time on my stupid chest or whatever--which doesn’t even hurt now, by the way.”

“Cut it out, Dean. You’ll be thanking me later.”

A few moments later, there’s a quick knock at the door, and a new nurse enters. She’s got a soft face and an even softer voice, so much so that Sam has to crane his neck forward to even hear her.

“Mr. Perry, we’ve got your ultrasound results, and we think we know what’s wrong with you.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I can’t fucking believe this,” Dean says as Sam drives them away from the hospital. “Gallstones, seriously?” He flips through the small stack of papers the nurses had given him—prescriptions for Vicodin, lists of foods he should avoid, way-too-graphic descriptions of what went down in his body to make this happen to him, and a form to remind him that he’s scheduled for surgery the day after tomorrow—then tosses them into the backseat.

“Hey, Dean, c’mon, don’t lose those!”  

“Why do I even need surgery? They said people live with these little fuckers all the time. Hell, you’ve probably got some of your own, Sammy.”

“They said yours are infected, and badly enough that they need to get them out as soon as possible.”

“They just wanna get paid,” Dean grumbles, staring out the window, his body slumped like a moody teenager who was just told he couldn’t go to a party.

Sam scoffs at that. “Dude, the nurse said they can be caused by shitty diets, and guess what your diet is?”

“Perfect.”

“Try ‘the definition of shitty.’”

“Bite me, Sam.”

Sam decides it’s best not to try and think up another comeback, so instead he just keeps driving, hoping that Dean will miss them driving past the motel. He’s not that lucky, though; seconds after they pass the parking lot, he feels his brother smack his arm.

“Y’passed the motel.”

“We need to get you some food first.”

Dean straightens at that and smiles. “Now you’re talkin’, Sammy. Did you see that diner downtown that we passed on the way in? With the signs for the best double bacon cheeseburgers in the state?”

Sam shakes his head. “No way, Dean.”

“ _What_?”

“They told you to stay away from fatty or greasy foods until the surgery; the last thing you should be eating right now is diner food, man.”

Dean frowns. “So you’re just gonna starve me, then?”

“I’m getting you healthy food so you don’t have another attack.”

“...You mean food that you like.”

Sam shrugs. “Well, yeah. I guess.”

Dean sighs and smacks his open palm against the window. “I want a cheeseburger, Sam.”

“And I want a brother who doesn’t act like he’s twelve years old, but we can’t always get what we want.” Sam smirks as Dean’s eyes darken and he resumes his pouty teenager position. “Who knows,” he adds, pulling into a grocery store parking lot. “Maybe we’ll be able to find something you’ll actually like.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Nope.” Dean drops his fork into the salad that Sam’s made him, complete with cherry tomatoes, kale, lettuce, carrots, sliced apples, and pretty much everything else that Dean hates. There had been some grilled chicken in there, but Dean had picked through the greens to find it and refused to eat any other part of it.

“Dean, come on.”

“This is appalling.”

“Dean--”

“Sam.”

Sam leans back in his chair and pinches the bridge of his nose. “You’re killing me,” he mutters. “So what, you’re just not gonna eat?”

“Guess not.” Dean folds his arms across his chest and stares at Sam. “You gonna let your brother die just because you’re too stubborn to let him have a burger, Sammy?”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Shut up. You’ve got perfectly good food right in front of you, food that isn’t gonna make you sick, I might add.”

“That’s not food, Sam. It’s...it’s friggin’ grass.” Dean sighs. “Can’t I have anything good?”

Sam pauses, thinking of the list of Dean’s new dietary restrictions. “Uh...yogurt?”

“Yogurt.”

“What? Yogurt’s good.”

Dean barks out a laugh. “You think _this_ is good; why would I trust your opinions on _yogurt_?”

“Would it kill you to be mature about this?”

“Yes.”

Sam rolls his eyes, grabs his own bowl of salad, and heads for his bed. “Guess you’re not eating, then.” He takes a bite and turns on the TV.

“Damn it, Sam.”

“It’ll still be there if you change your mind, dude.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Dean wakes Sam up again in the middle of the night, but this time it’s with retching instead of gasping.

Sam practically jumps out of bed and stumbles toward the bathroom, Dean’s dry heaves echoing throughout the room.

He opens the door to find Dean on his knees resting his forehead against the toilet seat, his arms wrapped gingerly around his torso. The smell of vomit hangs heavy in the air, and Sam automatically starts breathing through his mouth to avoid the stench.

“Hey, hey,” he says softly before pressing a hand lightly against Dean’s back. “You okay? What happened?”

Dean doesn’t move for a few seconds, then slowly looks up. His face is pale and his eyes are sunken, as if he hasn’t slept in days. Sam can’t help but notice the shallow breathing, and the fact that Dean stays doubled over, wincing and gritting his teeth.

“S’m.”

“Chicken was on the list of foods you could eat, why would it trigger another attack?”

“ _S’m_.”

“What?”

Sam watches as Dean’s eyes flick over to the trashcan under the sink, which holds a crumpled fast food bag and cup. Sam stares at it for a few seconds, then looks back at Dean.

“You didn’t.”

“I was hungry.” Dean presses his forehead back against the seat.

“You were…” Sam finds himself clenching and unclenching his fists. He wants to smack Dean, rear back and hit him so hard it’ll force some common sense into his head, but instead he steps over his brother’s legs and sits down on the edge of the bathtub, his head in his hands. “Jesus, Dean.”

Dean stays motionless, and Sam wonders if he’s fallen asleep when he hears his voice, rough and scratchy from coughing.

“M...maybe I’ll try a carrot.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

The next day goes by smoothly, mainly due to the fact that Dean sleeps for most of the day after his latest gallstone fiasco. Sam gives him some vicodin to help with the pain, and during the rare moments when Dean is awake, Sam manages to coax him into eating carrots with some dressing, and apples with peanut butter, which Dean begrudgingly admits “aren’t bad.” Sam doesn’t tell Dean that he had to find the little packs of fruits and veggies in the section of the grocery store where moms go to get snacks for their kids; he figures Dean doesn’t need to know. Before Sam knows it, the alarm next to his bed is going off, and it’s time for him to get Dean to the hospital.

It’s still dark out as they make their way outside, Dean half-asleep as Sam half-leads, half-carries him to the Impala.

“S’mmy, I don’ think I wan’ surg’ry.”

“You’ll feel better once you do, Dean,” Sam says, leaning over his brother to buckle him into the passenger seat.

“They’re gonna knock me out.” Dean pauses. “And poke holes in me. What if they fuck up? Then what?”

“They won’t.” Sam places a hand on Dean’s shoulder and gives him a quick, reassuring grin. “This is probably one of the most routine surgeries there is.”

“How d’you know?”

“Because unlike you, I actually read the papers they gave you.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Show-off.”

Sam chuckles, then decides to switch tactics. “I’ll get you a burger after a few days, once you can handle one, okay?”

As expected, Dean perks up at this. “Promise?”

Sam grins. “Swear to God.”

“Good.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Mr. Tyler?”

Sam opens his eyes slowly, a blurry figure in a white coat standing in front of him. Doctor, Sam’s brain snaps, and he immediately perks up in the uncomfortable, too-small waiting room chair he’d been sprawled out in for the past few hours.

“Yeah? Yeah, sorry.” Sam rubs the rest of the sleep out of his eyes and focuses on the doctor. “Is everything okay?”

“Your cousin is fine,” the doctor says, giving Sam a small smile as he adjusts his glasses. He scans a clipboard and nods. “The surgery went smoothly.”

Sam breathes a sigh of relief and runs a hand through his hair. “Can I see him?”

“He’s still a little disoriented, but yes, you can go in and say hello. We’re just waiting for a little while longer to make sure he’s doing well, and then he’ll be able to be released.” He flips to another sheet on his clipboard. “Did anyone tell you about post-surgery requirements?”

Sam shakes his head, knowing already that it doesn’t matter; Dean won’t follow them.

“We recommended one to two weeks off of work, and six weeks of him carrying nothing heavier than ten pounds, just to make sure everything heals well. Does that sound doable?”

Yeah, Dean’s _definitely_ not following them.

“Totally.”

“Good. Now, if you’ll follow me, I can show you to his room.”

 

Dean’s eyes are closed when Sam enters the room, and he tiptoes to the chair next to Dean’s bed to avoid waking him up. He still looks pale, but the IV pumping fluids into his system makes Sam feel better.

“Hey, Dean,” he says softly, leaning forward a little. “Can you hear me?”

Dean’s eyelids flutter and eventually open. He turns his head toward Sam, a slightly confused look on his face before his brain catches up with his eyes.

“S’mmy,” he slurs, blinking slowly at Sam, his eyes wide. “D’they take it out?”

Sam nods. “They did. Doctor says you cried the whole way through.”

Dean opens his mouth, but just flips Sam off instead.

Sam grins. “How do you feel?”

“Like I just had a fuckin’ organ taken outta me.” Dean pauses, then pulls up the edge of his hospital gown until Sam can see the incisions in his brother’s torso: a long one down near his hips, and three small dots where the gallbladder was actually removed. Dean traces the dots with his finger.

“Lookit, Sammy,” he says. “You can play connect the dots with ‘em.”

Sam laughs. “Looks like you’ll be keeping yourself busy for a while then, huh?”

“‘ll kick y’r ass.”

“Sure.”

They sit in silence for a few seconds until Dean speaks again. “Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“Y’r...food wasn’t...not awful.”

Sam grins. “Can I get that in writing?”

“S’rsly,” Dean mumbles. “I...thanks for...helpin’ me, S’mmy.”

“Sure, Dean,” Sam says, watching as his brother closes his eyes, about to fall asleep again. “Any time.”

Sam is about to get up and find a coffee machine and wait until he can get his brother out of here when he hears Dean again. “Don’t forget m’cheeseburger.”

 


End file.
